Spawn #27 came back to my fishroom on 6/20/2014, as Mike Doty has opted to do another run of Lightnings with spawn #36 (update on that as of 6-30, there were only about 10 that made it from Spawn #35 – Mike had some hatching issues this time ’round).



 
I took the opportunity to do a headcount on Spawn #27 as I released the group into the BRT – provided I didn’t make any mistakes, the rough split was 28 Lightning Maroons, and 24 White Stripe Maroons.  Out of those 24 White Stripes, I maybe only noticed 3 that had extra markings and would fall into the “Morse Code” notion.

I should point out that Mike and I discussed his rearing methodologies at great length; you’ll recall that part of the reason for allowing him to rear batches was to see if he could do any better, and my own effort to learn from him and work in collaboration. Say what you will, but the bottom line is that Mike reared spawn #27 with what amounts to a 50% water change weekly.  I can guarantee I was nowhere near that on some runs.  Of course, that’s not the only difference involved here…his methodology was to drain the standalone BRT half way each week, and gradually fill it back up over the course of the week, and then repeat.
It seemed like a very manageable system, and frankly it should be obvious that good base maintenance will get you good results.  There are still some deformed fish, but if I have to be honest, I think he reared a superior batch than the first big one. I’m going to look into segregating them out, as well as stepping up the water changes overall, as that can only help produce superior fish. It’s interesting to note that the sizes do vary immensely within the group, whereas the group of 10 I had going from around the same time is more homogeneous in size and has more patterning, and is comparable in size to these.  It will take a lot of really specialized research to hone in on some of the variables in play, but I look forward to doing that if I’m able.
Mike’s routine is hardly surprising – my breeding of Angelfish relied strongly on 50% weekly water changes, and based on published recommendations, while I took 3-4 months to hit market size doing 50% weekly water changes on growout, if I had stepped it up to 50% daily water changes, I would have cut my growout time down to 6 week!  Think about that.